Aristotle’s (apocryphal) advice to Alexander the Great on Persian elites (2013)

http://purplemotes.net/2013/10/13/aristotle-advice-alexander-persia/

by Thevet • 11 years ago

111 47 11 years ago

It's interesting that this isn't a larger part of what people think about when they think about 'winnning' in the context of competition with other people. (I blame sports)

Losing- failing to get your way or being destroyed, is an obvious state.

What we call winning, which amounts to getting your way (often at the expense of others) is actually a shitty compromise.

Conversion of the 'enemy' is the real best outcome. Not only do you get your way, but you have more momentum, cooperation, ideas and resources working for your objective afterwards. This should always be your goal when you're "fighting" with other people, and anything else is a sort of failure.

mc322• 11 years ago

The problem is the enemy often resists these efforts. On the other hand, this tactic worked with colonialism. That's essentially what colonial powers did. They won over the people at first by force (conquered) and then via other means they coopted (won over) them and used them to their ends. Then at some point many colonies resented the remote and distanced governance and rebelled.

_nedR• 11 years ago

They won over the people at first by force (conquered) and then via other means they and coopted (won over) them and used them to their ends.

If by 'won them over', you mean they threatened anyone who opposed them with terrible consequences, and rewarded those who supported them then you are correct. Of course everyone from ISIL to the USA does varying degrees of the same thing.

Steko• 11 years ago

I dunno, the whole thing seems straight out of The Art of War, best is to win without fighting ... worst to besiege his cities.

junto• 11 years ago

As a supplement to this; if you do besiege his cities, always leave a narrow path of escape. A city without hope will fight to the death.

I'm fairly sure that is also in the Art of War too.

rokhayakebe• 11 years ago

No data for the following. One important "fact" people do not know is much of the western philosophical works (and other disciplines) we know today (from Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, etc...) are from Arabic writings. Apparently when the Muslim Arabs decided to go and conquer the West, they would take down libraries and rewrite all the knowledge in one language (Arabic). They sent out paid emissaries to the "Four corners of the world" to gather all human knowledge. To that end, Greek works were translated into Arabic and saved in their libraries in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.

gargarplex• 11 years ago

Are you comparing Google to the Caliphate?

guest2• 11 years ago

everybody knows that Google was founded by Caliph Ali's ghost working in conjunction with a dashing L. Ron Hubbard clone.

zorf• 11 years ago

According to Wikipedia, at least the writings of Plato seem to have come to the west during the middle ages from byzantine (i.e. Greek) sources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato#Textual_sources_and_hist...

oblio• 11 years ago

Yup. It feels strange to completely dismiss the one link between Antiquity and the Renaissance: the Roman Empire, or Byzantium as we now know it.

m-i-l• 11 years ago

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_of_the_Greek_Clas... : "This work of translation ... constituted one of the greatest transmissions of ideas in history".

5040• 11 years ago

One important "fact" people do not know is much of the western philosophical works (and other disciplines) we know today (from Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, etc...) are from Arabic writings

This statement greatly distorts the truth. Almost all extant Greek philosophical texts can be traced to 17 Byzantine manuscripts.

The book reviewed here has much more information about the transmission of Greek philosophy (the review is well-worth reading too):

http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2009/2009-01-31.html

qCOVET• 11 years ago

Here is another piece of story that is not in the article.

When Alexander tried to enter Afghanistan he was met with fierce resistance. Didn't matter what he did, he couldn't quench the uprisings and could not conquer the country. After losing a lot of men, he wrote to Aristotle for advise. Aristotle asked Alexander for a sample of Afghan soil to be shipped to him. Upon receipt of the soil samples, Aristotle laid them under the Court carpet and very soon started noticing that men of the court started fighting and killing each other. They became defiant to authority and that led Aristotle to the conclusion, that there is something unique and bizarre w/ the Afghan soil that makes men fight to the end ... and in a way .. remain as an unconquerable nation. He wrote back to Alexander to with draw from Afghanistan, and which he did.

To this day, from Alexander to British to Russia .. Afghanistan has remained pretty defiant to foreign occupation. We will see how long the US will stay there.

[note: The above story was passed onto us Afghans for generations and other than referencing my grandpa who is no longer w/ us, I unfortunately can't provide any references. So take it w/ a grain of salt.]

louhike• 11 years ago

I do not know a lot of countries which have not been defiants to foreign occupation. I'll put it harshly but it sounds a lot like propaganda. And as you can see on this map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_the_Great#/media/Fil..., he did invade Afghanistan, and even a part of today India.

yarou• 11 years ago

I'd hardly call it propaganda, it's merely a folk tale that reflects the cultural context within which it was developed. Sort of like the founding of Rome.

halviti• 11 years ago

In Iceland during WW2 we were occupied by the British first, and then the Americans. Aside from some strongly worded objections, we just kind of rolled over and took it.

protomyth2• 11 years ago

Genghis Khan did pretty well in his invasion of Afghanistan also.

mattmanser• 11 years ago

My Dad, who is known for spinning tales, once told me a story about a bomb wiping out the Chinese officers on a boat as they posed with it for a photograph. It had been left there by nationalists. This was the 60s, so the communists had only been in power a fairly short while. Also, just for context, this is in the days before super tankers when there were a lot more ships at sea and they were a lot smaller.

Because they had no-one to pilot the vessel they'd sent out distress calls and my Dad's ship went to aid. Now, technically, this counts as [some nautical term for salvageable rescue] and the crew of the rescuing ship is allowed a proportion of the cargo, so they'd have made quite a lot of money. So they're trying to get an officer swung over there in a swing to board the vessel, but can't because the seas are too choppy, so they end up telling the ship to follow theirs and they get them back to port (but forfeit the rescue money as they didn't actually provide anyone to pilot the vessel).

It gets in to harbour and a pilot goes out to take the vessel in (this is standard practice, local pilots always take a ship into port). He sits down in the chair, feels under the chair, thinks, hmm, that's odd and looks underneath only to discover another bomb!

Luckily that one was disposed of safely.

I thought this was a load of bollocks so I went home and researched it. Wikipedia confidently told me there had been no such bombings or conflict between nationalist Chinese and the Communists in the 60s. It even had a list of all the incidents, and no ship bomb is on there. I subsequently told my Dad it was a load of bollocks, and he got quite upset and ended up emailing me a photo of his log book to show he was on the boat in question, the only evidence he had.

Once I had the name of the boat, the Loch Gowan, suddenly I could google more confidently and lo and behold:

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1310&dat=19661114&id=...

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1314&dat=19661113&id=...

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1734&dat=19661114&id=...

Turns out he'd exaggerated a couple of details, but mostly, it was true. The captain had been killed, the 2nd officer at least injured, the 3rd officer wasn't experienced enough to pilot the ship.

Moral of the story, just because the internet can't back it up, doesn't mean it's not true! And it turns out my Dad doesn't always fib. And, wow, Google has load of old newspapers scanned and OCR'd.

IkmoIkmo4• 11 years ago

Even if the story of the letters and everything is true, the notion that people killed each other because there was Afghan soil under the carpet is obviously bollocks haha.

Thanks for sharing the story.

restalis3• 11 years ago

Hmm... You are right that there was strong resistance and that "after two years of war and a strong insurgency campaign, Alexander managed to establish little control over Bactria": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bactria#Alexander_the_Great

But that being said, it's also worth mentioning that that Bactria was one of the most prominent piece of Alexander's legacy, and Alexandria on the Oxus (the remains of which lies somewhere in the north of Afghanistan) was one of its primary cities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai-Khanoum

It seems that somehow things were settled and Afghanistan managed to become the heart of one of Alexander's remaining kingdoms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Bactrian_Kingdom

You can't really have such impressive results when there is little control under your hands!

nicolapede• 11 years ago

If anyone is interested in reading more about Alexander's military accomplishments, I found this book http://www.amazon.com/Alexander-Earliest-Detailed-Campaigns-... extremely interesting.

csomar• 11 years ago

Two things:

1. After travelling for a while, I believe that the air and nature of the region DO affect your brain and seems to be in sync with the people in that region.

2. I think this is more of a tale for cultural resilience. If the elderly teaches the young that they'll find until the end; they'll fight until the end. Look at Palestine.

guest2• 11 years ago

this is perhaps the finest pakistani canard I have read in months.

erikb2• 11 years ago

I must be reading something incorrectly. Certainly I didn't hear about these exchanges before. But is it correct that most of the exchanges can be boiled down to "be nice to people"? I always thought politics was based on keeping control of import political powers like media, military, law, food, and money while replacing people in high positions who don't work for you with people that you improved to these positions so that they will follow your rule. In some regard that's nice, at least to the people you improved, but in another regard it's also a selfish business. Can one go to another country, declare oneself as their leader and then just lead by being nice?

restalis3• 11 years ago

"Can one go to another country, declare oneself as their leader and then just lead by being nice?"

The thing is that Alexander's biggest proportion of conquests were the former Persian Empire's - lands of various people which all their life lived under some foreign rule. So there was a change in power, now here's this new ambitious and charismatic leader offering some of the most nicest conditions imaginable if you just submit. Considering Alexander's record of winnings and therefore - the chances of a revolt against him, is it that hard to believe that people preferred to stay put?

erikb2• 11 years ago

For most people you are right. But in every group large enough there are a few who always want more and who don't think as much about the risk. I'd argue that Alexander himself also was such a person. If you offered him nice conditions for his submission and a low chance to succeed by fighting, do you think he would have submitted?

And what about days when not everything is well and nice? Drought, famines, storms, sickness. When something irritating happens people tend to blame leaders. Suddenly the situation doesn't feel nice, no matter what you do as a leader. What do you do then? Go home and stop leading?

Just think about us. We probably live in the richest, most peacefully, culturally most widely developed time of human history, yet we don't feel happy about it. Many people would argue that another leader might be better for them than the current one. So I would argue that even if one lives a happy, good life, one is not so happy about it to fully trust the leader.

Herodotus38• 11 years ago

I just finished a Biography on Alexander the Great (Titled: Alexander the Great, The Hunt for a New Past. by Paul Cartledge), which I found to be very good because the author delves into the various sources of information on Alexander, which I found to be surprisingly scant as much has been lost and much has been handed down to us second hand in summarized form (such as through Plutarch). Alexander had his own personal biographer (who accompanied him on his campaign), Callisthenes put to death.

A great quote from the book: "The situation we are faced with can be summed up roughly as followes. Inspired by the example of Theopompus and his pioneering Philippica (a history of Greece written around the career of Philip II of Macedon, Alexander's father), more than twenty contemporaries wrote histories or other kinds of work on Alexander. Not one of these histories survives in the original. Of the many letters ascribed to Alexander, just one extract of one of them has a better than average claim to being genuine. The earliest surviving connected narrative account of Alexander's campaigns was composed in the first century BCE, some three hundred years after the events it relates; it is, besides, only incompletely preserved. Thus the sole connected narrative to have survived complete is a third century CE epitome, or abrigment, of a first-century BCE work in Latin by a Romanized Gaul. Finally, what is generally today accounted the best of the more or less completely surviving histories of Alexander was written by a Greek philosopher-statesman in the second century CE, probably during the reigh of the philhellinic emperor Hadrian. In short, 'it is as if the history of Tudor England could only be recovered from Macaulay's essays and the histories of Hume the philospher' (Robin Lane Fox)."

I'll admit, being an American I don't quite grasp the full context of that quote but you can get the gist. Basically, I wouldn't take this letter for actually being true (which the title rightly states as being apocryphal) and rather read take it in its own context of someone, probably a much later Arabic (edit: or Persian) writer using the story of Alexander as a means of conveying their thoughts.

rmc3• 11 years ago

It's fascinating how little documents we have of people who were incredibly famous and powerful while they lived.

Often, some claim that Jesus of Nazareth didn't exist because we have no documented evidence of him from his lifetime. But Alexander was viewed (in his time) as conquring the whole world, and we still don't have written evidence from his life.

IkmoIkmo4• 11 years ago

as conquring the whole world

Unless it's a matter of speech, he conquered about 3.5% of the world's land mass and about a third of the (estimated) population, neither of which put you in the top 3 and couldn't be considered the 'whole world' either. By land mass it's not even in the top 20 largest empires ever. He was unique not for the greatest empire but rather for being so primely responsible for the massive empire he did create and in doing it all in about 12 years, the British empire for example by comparison has no single persons who were so primely responsible with many leaders emerging over hundreds of years, combined with his personal role in battles, all of which ending in victory, makes him the stuff of legends.

protomyth2• 11 years ago

Its also interesting the mindset of some of the documents. We have a distinctly European view of Genghis Khan which might be more 'look at the devil' than reality or what was said in the home grown documents.

selleck• 11 years ago

Ozymandias Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792 - 1822

I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

lololololololol• 11 years ago

Wow, is this some sort of religious propaganda because it got too religious too quick (I stopped after reading the story about the Jew being bad and the Zoroastrian being a good Muslim). This is a classical example of confirmation bias - the author is seeking to confirm his theory about the supeemacy of one religion over others and finds positive evidence wherr se deems fit.

This is not to say that one religion is truly better than other - all religions are equally unprovable so dont bother. Hacketnews is about computer science, not religious propaganda.

restalis3• 11 years ago

I continued reading and found this: "This didactic story probably wasn’t meant to teach that Jews are evil. The ethics ascribed to the Jew are practical ethics undoubtedly common across human tribal groups."

Adrock• 11 years ago

This defamatory story probably wasn't meant to be defamatory.

IkmoIkmo4• 11 years ago

What am I missing here, Alexander predates Islam by some 900 years and Zoroastrianism is a unique religion separate from Islam? How does this make any sense?

eli_gottlieb• 11 years ago

Yeah, I'm not really sure what the point of the page is, other than to tell some apocryphal stories that use cultural groups and historical figures as fairy-tale archetypes.

koalaman• 11 years ago

I'm confused, Alexander the Great was an Arab?

stevenmays• 11 years ago

He was Macedonian.

eternalban2• 11 years ago

Possibly 1/2 Macedonian, 1/2 "Lion-Snake": http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/L... ... ;-)

Aristotle’s (apocryphal) advice to Alexander the Great on Persian elites (2013)

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